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Rick Santorum Has Trouble Defending Armor-Piercing Bullet Access

Conservatives have developed a strategy when confronted with common sense gun control arguments. Take this, for instance: On this week's edition of This Week Sunday, former Presidential hopeful Rick Santorum found himself in the uncomfortable position of having to defend the use of armor-piercing bullets and why any average American should have access to that kind of fire power. As per the NRA's standard set of talking points, Santorum tried to blame Obama, video games and the way modern society has changed and become more violent - but that didn't fool the rest of the panel who challenged him to answer the simple question.

“I think we should stick to our guns,” Santorum said in response to the panel question about gun control. Former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm took him to task for his statement, and brought the argument around to Obama's executive actions relating to banning high capacity magazines and bullets that can pierce police armor. Here's a transcript of the exchange:

Granholm: Why have a magazine that can riddle a six-year-old into shreds?

Santorum: Here’s what I would say about that. 50 years ago, you could go on a catalog and buy a gun. There were no restrictions on gun ownership, there were no restrictions on magazines, there were no restrictions on anything and we had a lot less violence in society than we do today. The idea of pointing to the gun instead of pointing to society….Not one thing the president did dealt with Hollywood and gun violence and video games and all the glorification of violence.

Granholm:: Why do you need to protect armor-piercing bullets, why do you need that?

Santorum: Why do you need to protect Hollywood? Putting films in front of us to glorify...

Santorum: But criminals could…having the ability to defend yourself is something that is a right in our country.

Granholm:: And police officers certainly do…

As we've already discussed on this blog repetitively, no link between real-lie violence and violent media / video games exists. If it did, we would see similar patterns of gun violence in other countries. The Entertainment Software Association agrees with me too. They recently said, “The same entertainment is enjoyed across all cultures and nations, but tragic levels of gun violence remain unique to our country. Scientific research an international and domestic crime data point toward the same conclusion: Entertainment does not cause violent behavior in the real world.” Gun violence is unique to the United States among similar first world countries with access to the same entertainment material. That's of no consequence though; like businesses with fewer than 50 employees that blame Obamacare for their failing businesses, gun fanatics will continue to scapegoat violent media and games even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Casual or indirect links aside, the argument against violent media is moot. Just as gun fanatics love to tout the phrase about pulling guns from their cold, dead hands, free speech advocates will do the same for First Amendment rights relating to entertainment - and have already, in fact. Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association already covered this issue and found in favor of video games, saying they are indeed a form of free speech and are covered by the First Amendment.

Eventually gun fanatics will have to wake up and realize the conversation about gun control will happen with or without their support or participation. Rather than plug their ears and scream that the President is taking away everyone's guns, it's time for them to join the conversation to see how we can make this a safer nation. Of course, if they want to continue to ignore the problem, it seems that the impetus to change the law will prevail regardless and gun control will become a reality.